Wednesday, August 12, 2026

08/12 Links Pt1: Why isn’t Iran attacking Israel?; What Trump's deal changed and why Israel was right to reject it; Isolated Israel? Countries rush to sign trade and security deals

From Ian:

Why isn’t Iran attacking Israel?
Iran’s last weapon
Iran has delivered a sweeping set of demands that the United States must meet before the Strait of Hormuz can be reopened to maritime traffic. The Islamic Republic of Iran has been fighting a war with the Great Satan, America, and the Little Satan, Israel, for 46 years.

Iran’s most powerful strategy has been to use proxies and drones. The proxies are on life support, but not their drones. They are able to keep the Gulf destabilized with these drones and also hit American bases, despite the fact that the US and Israel have neutralized more than 90% of those missiles.

Bombing bridges and power plants is not the answer. It will only hurt the Persian people who are crying out for freedom.

Why isn’t Iran attacking Israel?
To understand what is happening, one must ask a simple question: Why is Iran not attacking Israel?

The answer is that Israel fought one of the first true drone wars involving a great power. But what Israel did that was most effective was target Iranian leadership, such as Razi Mousavi, senior IRGC general and overseer of Syrian-Iran military coordination; Mohammad Reza Zahedi, IRGC Quds Force commander for Lebanon and Syria; Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader; Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council; Gholamreza Soleimani, commander of the Basij internal security forces; Alireza Tangsiri, commander of the IRGC Navy; and dozens, if not hundreds, of other Iranian leaders.

Iran is not attacking Israel because Israel targeted the top leadership of Iran, primarily through drone warfare. Cutting off the head of the snake is the key to keeping those snakes from procreating.

Trump has broken Iran’s war machine
What Donald Trump has achieved in the Iran war is astonishing, despite the liberal, godless media attacking him and claiming he has failed. Iran’s nuclear backbone has been broken, and its war machine is in shambles.

The next phase of the war does not have to be a major military operation. Quite the contrary, the US has the largest inventory of advanced drones in the world, but needs to manufacture 10 times that amount.

Iran’s only power left is its drones. They are trying to smuggle more of those fiber-optic drones to Hezbollah through Syria and Iraq and hit US bases in Iran, Kuwait, and Jordan.
Global campaign launched to counter claims of Israeli genocide in Gaza
More than 35 organizations from around the world have joined together in a campaign aiming to debunk “Hamas genocidal propaganda” about the Gaza war.

International Legal Forum CEO Michal Cotler-Wunsh says Hamas’s claim threatens foundational principles of law by hijacking the term genocide to spread what she calls “a modern blood libel,” accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinian people.

Other organizations involved in the “Gaza GenoLIE” campaign include the American-based Anti-Defamation League, the International Legal Forum, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and the World Columnist Jesse Kline keeps you up to date with what’s happening in Israel and the effects of antisemitism on life here in Canada. Friday mornings.

“The term ‘genocide,’ along with other international legal terms, has been deliberately and systematically hijacked, redefined, inverted, and weaponized to demonize, delegitimize, and apply double standards to ‘the Jew’ among nations,” Cotler-Wunsh said in a statement. “This well-orchestrated campaign to spread a modern blood libel accusing Israel of ‘genocide’ began before any Israeli response to Hamas’ genocidal war crimes and crimes against humanity of October 7.”

The GenoLIE website asserts that the genocide claims began on Oct. 8, 2023, the day after Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing 1,200 Israelis, most of them civilians. The word genocide was already in wide use, even though Israel’s ground operation did not begin until Oct. 27.

Amnesty International, certain UN bodies and other international groups have found there is evidence Israel committed genocide during the Gaza War. But Israel insists such investigations are fatally biased, and that the nation has done all it can to limit civilian casualties in a war in which the enemy hides behind its civilian population.

Israel acknowledges more than 70,000 people have died in the war. Gaza’s population was about two million prior to the war.

The Gaza GenoLIE website says it is an educational initiative about the “generated and orchestrated genocide lie promoted by anti-Zionists and antisemitic networks in the U.S., Europe and around the world.”

Genocide was defined in the 1948 Genocide Convention, drafted after the Holocaust. Under Article II, genocide refers to certain acts, such as killing, causing serious harm, inflicting destructive conditions of life, committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”

The GenoLIE campaign argues the most crucial element is the word “intent,” noting that the convention does not merely ask whether people died, or whether they died in large numbers, it asks whether the perpetrator acted with the specific purpose of destroying a protected group because of its membership in that group.

The groups argue that Israel waged war to dismantle Hamas and secure the release of the hostages, and the civilian death toll was a consequence of urban combat against an enemy that “purposely and cynically embed(ed) itself” among its own population.
Third Time Is the Charm? The Mecca Pact and the Sad History of Collective Defense
Seventy-five Years of Collective Defense Announcements
The clearest recent illustration of the gap between announcement and defense lies one country away from Riyadh. Turkey has maintained roughly 3,000 troops in Qatar under a defense partnership that deepened considerably after the 2017 Gulf blockade, a presence Ankara initially characterized as a real fighting force rather than a symbolic gesture. That presence was tested twice within a year, and twice it did nothing. When Iran struck the Al Udeid air base near Doha in June 2025, and again during the war in 2026, the Turkish presence neither deterred the attacks nor prompted a response. When Israel struck Hamas leadership in Doha in September 2025, the Turkish response was a condemnation at the United Nations and attendance at an emergency summit, not a military one.

What is missing from the Turkish presence in Qatar, and from every agreement examined here, is the conversion of solidarity into obligation: a common definition of the aggression that triggers the guarantee, forces assigned to it in advance, an integrated command, agreed rules of engagement, and a settled answer to who decides that the common war has begun. This is the difference between these pacts and the alliance they imitate. NATO functions not because its members pray next to one another but because a common threat and an American hegemon willing to underwrite the guarantee made it worth the surrender of sovereignty that integrated command requires. The Middle East’s treaties reproduce NATO’s language while omitting each of these foundations because their signatories face different adversaries, decline to place their forces under a partner’s command, and have no hegemon prepared to compel or reassure them. A mutual-defense clause is cheap to sign and dear to honor, and one cannot collect its benefits without bearing its costs. The Mecca pact reproduces this arrangement on a larger scale, and with fewer troops actually deployed.

The pattern predates the present crisis by three-quarters of a century. The Treaty of Joint Defense and Economic Cooperation of Arab states in 1950, signed a year after the defeat in Palestine, contained the same clause declaring aggression against one member to be aggression against all, and it established a Joint Defense Council that never functioned as a coordinating body, most conspicuously in the 1967 war, in which the Arab League as such did not intervene at all. The United Arab Command, promised at the first Arab summit in January 1964 and placed under an Egyptian commander, was the only tangible product of that promise. When Israel raided the Jordanian-held West Bank village of as-Samu in November 1966, the command did nothing: its Egyptian core was tied down in the war in Yemen, and the frontline states had refused to allow Egyptian troops onto their soil. There was only one instance in which such a mutual defense treaty was honored, and it led to a disaster when, in May 1967, King Hussein of Jordan placed his army under the Egyptian general Abdul Munim Riad in the days before the war. The sole consequence was that General Riad, acting on false reports of Egyptian victory relayed from Cairo, ordered the Jordanian front into an offensive that cost Jordan East Jerusalem and the West Bank within seventy-two hours. The pattern has persisted in the present decade. Egypt’s proposal for a unified Arab force at Sharm el-Sheikh in 2015, and its NATO-style proposal at Doha in September 2025, never came to fruition.

Collective defense agreements in the Middle East have repeatedly functioned as projects of regional order and leadership before they functioned as mechanisms of war. This is why their ceremonial character is substantive rather than incidental. Thus, they repeatedly flounder because collective defense is never merely collective defense. To determine the supreme commander is to determine hierarchy. To place forces permanently in another regional country is to create political leverage inside it. To decide which threat activates the common force is to decide whose definition of regional order prevails. To institutionalize an alliance is therefore to settle, or at least freeze, the struggle for primacy among states that have rarely accepted one another’s primacy.

NATO did not solve this problem through superior committee design. It solved it politically because there was never serious doubt that the United States sat at the apex of the alliance. Western Europeans could integrate because integration did not require Britain, France, West Germany, Italy, and Belgium to settle among themselves which one would dominate the others; an overwhelmingly superior external power already occupied the commanding position, and a massive Soviet adversary supplied a threat sufficiently common to make American hierarchy tolerable.

Assessment
Moreover, the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement is best understood as a message directed at Washington rather than a capability directed at Tehran. Since October 7, Saudi Arabia has worked steadily to advertise its strategic autonomy and its access to alternative partners, first through the bilateral pact with Pakistan, then through the quadrilateral that never materialized, and now through a trilateral agreement staged for maximum visibility. The aim of this sequence has been to raise the cost of American disengagement by demonstrating that the kingdom is prepared to seek elsewhere the guarantees it no longer trusts Washington to provide. The same message is being delivered on other fronts: when the Saudi commentator Ali Shihabi, a reliable barometer of official thinking, warned in the Washington Post that pressing Riyadh too hard on the terms of civil nuclear cooperation could push the Kingdom toward China instead, he was performing the same function as the pacts, reminding Washington that the Kingdom has options and intends to be seen holding them.

For American policymakers, the appropriate response is to read the pact as a piece of diplomatic theater designed to leverage security concessions from Washington. Riyadh’s search for alternatives arises partly from a shortage of defensive capacity and partly from uncertainty about the conditions under which American power will actually be used to defend the Kingdom. Additional air-defense assets can reduce the first problem; only a clearer and more credible understanding of consultation, resupply, and response to proxy attack can address the second. The agreement is, in the end, an argument about American reliability conducted in the language of alliance, and in this region that language has a long history of describing commitments that no one genuinely intends to keep.


Isolated Israel? Countries rush to sign trade and security deals
One of the most persistent claims in Israeli politics today is that the country has become internationally isolated. Opposition figures cite hostile votes in global forums, western criticism and deteriorating public opinion as evidence that the government has inflicted lasting diplomatic damage. Coalition politicians respond that Israel remains respected, feared and highly sought after.

As Israelis prepare to vote on October 27, this question matters. Voters will be asked, explicitly or otherwise, whether the coalition has dangerously isolated Israel or whether the opposition is mistaking hostile headlines for diplomatic reality. The honest answer is more complicated than either campaign slogan. Israel faces serious international challenges, but it is far from isolated.

During my time as an adviser to Israeli ministers, I often heard foreign officials say very different things behind closed doors from what they declared publicly. Their condemnations were often intended largely for domestic political consumption. In private, they expressed far greater understanding of Israel’s positions and actions, spoke about intelligence cooperation, trade, agriculture and shared threats.

That distinction between public rhetoric and private national interest is more pronounced today than ever.

Consider Latin America. Colombia severed relations with Israel in 2024. Yet its incoming government has agreed to restore full diplomatic and economic relations, remove visa requirements and move Colombia’s embassy to Jerusalem. Bolivia, which also broke relations after October 7, restored them in December 2025. Argentina has become one of Israel’s closest partners under President Javier Milei, moved its embassy to Jerusalem and launched the “Isaac Accords” to deepen cooperation between Israel and Latin America.

Slovenia offers another striking example. Its previous government recognised a Palestinian state, imposed an arms embargo and barred senior Israeli ministers. The new government lifted those measures. Slovenia is now planning to move its embassy to Jerusalem, while Israel will open its first resident embassy in Ljubljana. These reversals demonstrate an elementary truth too often ignored in diplomatic commentary: governments change.

The diplomatic movement towards Jerusalem is itself difficult to reconcile with claims of isolation. The US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, Papua New Guinea and Paraguay already had embassies in the capital. Fiji became the seventh in September 2025, Argentina the eighth, Palau become the ninth, with Colombia and Slovenia now expected to follow.

Ecuador has opened an official diplomatic innovation office in Jerusalem, while legislators from 12 Latin American countries recently backed further embassy moves.

However, perhaps the strongest evidence comes from Europe. Countries do not entrust their national security to a state they consider an international pariah. Israeli defence exports reached a record £14 billion in 2025, an increase of almost 30 per cent in one year. Europe remained the largest regional customer.
Elbit Systems order backlog hits $32 billion amid global defense boom
The war in Ukraine is already in its fifth year; Israel has been through two rounds of fighting with Iran within a year, and China continues to put pressure on the countries around it.

The result: another record quarter for Elbit Systems.

The manufacturer of Hermes drones, munitions, and intelligence systems reported a 16% increase in sales in the second quarter of the year to $2.3 billion, putting it on track for annual sales of $9 billion. Net profit rose even more sharply, jumping 40% to $173.6 million.

The company's order backlog reached an all-time high of $32 billion, compared with $23.8 billion a year earlier, a 33% increase.

Sales to the Defense Ministry continued to grow in the latest quarter, reaching 37% of the company's activity, driven by munitions, drones, and intelligence systems. Increased sales of radio and command-and-control systems in Europe drive profits

Sales of C4I and cyber systems rose by about 11%, mainly due to increased sales of radio and command-and-control systems in Europe. Intelligence and electronic warfare sales increased by about 22%, primarily due to higher sales of land- and airborne high-power laser systems, electronic warfare systems, and naval systems in the Asia-Pacific region.

Land systems sales rose by about 32%, thanks to sales of munitions and ammunition in Israel. Drone sales, by contrast, fell by about 8%, mainly due to an unfavorable one-time project mix and a decline in sales of training systems and simulators in Europe, which was partly offset by increased sales of unmanned aerial vehicles in Israel.

Earnings per share stood at $3.61, compared with $2.69 in the corresponding quarter last year.

"Most of the new orders are from abroad, which indicates the demand and interest in our products. We presented the airborne laser for fighter jets and combat helicopters, which will help, among other things, deal with swarm attacks by UAVs and drones, and there is great interest in them,” Bezhalel "Butzi" Machlis, president and CEO of Elbit Systems, told Walla.

“At the same time, we are continuing to increase deliveries of the high-power laser to the Defense Ministry and Rafael. Hundreds of our engineers are employed on this."
Israel, Venezuela renew consular relations after 17 years
Israel and Venezuela agreed on Tuesday to renew consular relations and establish a coordination mechanism to provide services to citizens of both countries, the two governments jointly announced.

The agreement, reached following talks between Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and his Venezuelan counterpart Félix Plasencia González, creates an official channel of coordination between Jerusalem and Caracas, which have not maintained diplomatic relations since 2009.

The two countries also agreed to continue technical cooperation tied to emergency response and reconstruction following Venezuela’s June earthquakes. An Israeli humanitarian delegation led by the Foreign Ministry and the Israel Defense Forces Home Front Command assisted Venezuelan authorities for several weeks after the disaster.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry, IDF Home Front Command and Israeli National Emergency Management Authority sent more than 50 professionals to assist local authorities, and Venezuelan leaders requested that the mission be extended.

At one point, 32 Israeli specialists were operating in La Guaira, near Caracas, helping authorities shift from immediate emergency response to long-term rehabilitation. Israeli personnel aided damage assessments, recovery planning and decision-making after hundreds of coastal buildings were destroyed.

The Israeli deployment was the Home Front Command’s longest humanitarian assistance mission to date.

The joint statement also highlighted Venezuela’s Jewish community as a bridge of “historic friendship” between the two countries.

A top rabbi in Venezuela on Sunday asked the country’s president, Delcy Rodríguez, to restore diplomatic relations with Israel, the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry said.

Rabbi Isaac Cohen, chief rabbi of the Israelite Association of Venezuela (AIV), delivered a letter addressed to Rodríguez during a meeting with Plasencia at the ministry’s headquarters in Caracas, according to a ministry statement.

The meeting was to “address the needs of the Jewish community in our country,” said Plasencia, according to the ministry.

“Venezuela has historically welcomed, with open arms, a large Jewish community whose contributions have added, and continue to add, to the well-being and development of our nation,” he added.
Israel sends aid delegation to Colombia after earthquake
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said an aid delegation would be immediately dispatched to Colombia in a statement from the Government Press Office on Wednesday evening.

Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella asked Netanyahu to send a delegation to the country following an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.4 on Monday, the statement explained.

The earthquake, which occured in the heart of Colombia's coffee region, killed at least 250 people and reduced multi-story buildings to rubble in cities such as Pereira and Cali.

It also caused one of the towers of a historic cathedral in the city of Manizales to crack apart.

Emergency teams aided by police, soldiers, and volunteers have been working with excavators and, at times, their bare hands, hunting for survivors beneath debris.

Colombia-Israel relations improve
This request came amid efforts to improve relations between the two countries, part of Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s broader initiative to improve relations with South American countries, with the Foreign Ministry designating 2026 as the “Year of Latin America.”

Colombia recognized Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights in a statement released by the country's Foreign Ministry on Monday.

In the statement, published on X/Twitter, the ministry recognized Israeli control over the area as “an essential component of its national defense and its ability to protect and safeguard its citizens."

The recognition resulted from a commitment made by both Israel and Colombia on Saturday, the ministry said.


As Hormuz talks stall, experts see economic pressure — not war — as Trump’s likely path
Talks to reopen the Strait of Hormuz appear unlikely to produce an agreement, analysts told Jewish Insider this week, with little sign that Washington and Tehran can bridge their competing demands over the waterway. The Trump administration is more likely to pursue continued economic pressure than return to military confrontation, the experts suggested — but that strategy may not be enough to force Tehran to back down.

Reports indicate that an agreement between Iran and Oman on managing traffic through the strait is imminent, but a final deal has failed to materialize despite days of negotiations. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, insisted on Tuesday that any agreement reached between the two countries is separate from Tehran’s broader closure of the waterway, which will only be lifted once the U.S. accedes to Tehran’s demands, including full compensation for its war costs.

Trump has also applied conditions of his own, stating the U.S. would also seek compensation from Iran for the current conflict as well as previous ones. Experts maintained to JI that a broader agreement between Washington and Tehran over the strait appears increasingly unlikely, with both sides seeking to preserve the leverage they have gained.

“Iran is unlikely to give up control of the strait anytime soon, having spent years threatening to choke the waterway and finally proving it can with relatively few cheap missiles and drones,” Ari Cicurel, associate director of foreign policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, told JI. “The mere threat of attacks remains Iran’s best leverage after a war that gutted its economy, which is why its demands for reopening [the strait] center on Washington lifting the blockade and pulling back forces, the two things that give the United States its own leverage, leaving the two sides’ positions increasingly incompatible.”

Steven Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said his “sense is that we are going to have a long and drawn-out contest of wills over the strait.”

“The president has toggled between threatening force, using force and negotiating. He seems to like the idea of economic pressure, but of course there is no way of knowing that the resulting economic pain will dislodge the regime,” he continued.
Trump: I don’t trust Iran, U.S. has ‘total control’ over Hormuz
U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters on Tuesday that he’s under no illusions as to the trustworthiness of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

“I don’t trust Iran. Why—are you saying I trust Iran? I’m the last person to trust Iran. They’ve lied to me constantly,” the president said at the Joint Base Andrews air base in Maryland.

“We have total control over the Hormuz strait right now. They don’t have control. We have total control. We own it. And at some point maybe they’ll do something and then get blown away. But right now we’re in a very good position” vis-à-vis the regime, he continued.

“We have a country that has been the bully of the Middle East for 50 years ... and they’re no longer the bully of the Middle East,” he added.

U.S. Central Command on Tuesday said that its forces prevented a commercial vessel in the Strait of Hormuz from breaking the U.S. blockade imposed on Iranian ports, disabling its steering gear.

A U.S. Navy MH-60 helicopter fired two hellfire missiles into the Panama-flagged M/V Vela Nova’s engine room “after the ship’s civilian crew ignored repeated warnings from American forces,” CENTCOM wrote on X.

It went on to say that as of Tuesday, U.S. forces had redirected 55 commercial ships attempting to violate the blockade, disabled three non-compliant vessels, and boarded two.
The Gaza bait and switch: What Trump's deal changed and why Israel was right to reject it
Start with the disarmament and removal of Hamas – the whole point of this process. Point 13 of the original plan was unambiguous: Hamas’s infrastructure would be “destroyed and not rebuilt” with weapons “permanently beyond use.”

Article 8 of the road map uses different language – weapons are to be “decommissioned and stored” only after the incoming National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) has taken charge and the International Stabilization Force (ISF) is deployed.

“Destroyed” became “stored,” and the new governing body now precedes Hamas’s disarmament rather than following it. Article 9 goes a step further, subjecting “personal weapons” belonging to Gazan citizens to Palestinian law under the NCAG. Personal weapons? Palestinian law?

The ISF’s role may be the single most consequential change. Originally, it was “the long-term internal security solution,” working alongside Israel. But Article 12 of the road map redefines its job as separating Israeli forces from NCAG-controlled areas and explicitly bars it from any policing role.

Internal security, however, now falls entirely to a Palestinian police force; Israel has no role in vetting this force.

The ISF hasn’t been diminished – it has been redefined. What was originally meant to be a security partner now serves as a buffer standing between Israel and the Gaza population centers instead.

This raises a question that the road map never answers: If the ISF isn’t the internal security solution, who actually takes Hamas’s weapons away?

What’s emerging instead is a Palestinian Authority security force under a new acronym. A former PA bureaucrat leads the NCAG, which is shaping up to be “PA 2.0.” Notably, the original plan demanded comprehensive reform by the PA before it would play any role in Gaza.

LET’S BE clear about what this adds up to. While Trump’s original 20-point plan aspired to a Gaza free of Hamas, this road map eventuates in its preservation.

Consider Article 10: “Weapons of the militias shall be decommissioned and stored under NCAG authority ... Members of those militias shall not be integrated into the security and police services.”

The militias in question are the courageous anti-Hamas groups that have formed in Gaza – some working with the IDF, fighting to free Gaza from Hamas, and seeking peaceful coexistence with Israel. The road map categorically excludes them from the future police force.

This begs the question: If the goal is a post-Hamas Gaza, and police officers are to be vetted, what vetting standard would these anti-Hamas militias fail? These militias are the closest thing Gaza has to a homegrown constituency for coexistence, and they are the one group locked out of building what replaces Hamas.

The issue of Palestinian statehood follows the same pattern. In the 20-point plan, it appears only at the end, as a distant aspiration contingent on real PA reform and progress toward transforming Gaza’s society.

In the road map, a Palestinian state is introduced in Article 1 as a core aim, and it reappears in Article 8, tied to the weapons process – but with no mention of PA reform at all.

Netanyahu addressed this too on Sunday, saying that “as long as I am prime minister, there will be no Palestinian state.” That is the correct answer to a document that tried to smuggle statehood in through the front door while dropping the one safeguard – PA reform – that made the idea conditional in the first place.

And the body meant to enforce all of this, the International Verification Committee, includes Qatar and Turkey among its guarantors – two governments with long records of financing and hosting Hamas’s leadership. They have now been positioned to judge whether Hamas is keeping its word.

Nickolay Mladenov, the head of the Board of Peace, said the quiet part out loud when he wrote that Israeli withdrawal “must move in lock step with decommissioning” weapons. That phrase captures precisely the sequencing shift Netanyahu just refused to accept.

This is not a new story. It is the oldest story in Israel’s diplomatic history. From the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty to the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, nearly every agreement Israel has signed has followed the same arc: the other side ignores its written obligations, and Israel is expected to accept less than was promised.

For example, the Oslo Accords required the PA to educate its population toward peaceful coexistence. That clause was abandoned without consequence, and two generations of Palestinians were raised on a curriculum that teaches murdering Israelis is the highest act of patriotism.

This road map is repeating that pattern in real time, clause by clause. Netanyahu’s rejection is the first sign that, in a post-October 7 world, Israel may finally be prepared to insist that all agreements be implemented exactly as written. Netanyahu must hold his ground and declare that the decades of bait-and-switch games are over.
Board of Peace’s Gaza envoy denies financial deal with Hamas: ‘Not on the table’
The Board of Peace on Wednesday denied that there is any “financial agreement” with Hamas, after the Kan public broadcaster reported that the body agreed to cover $400 million of Hamas’s debt to outside parties as part of its roadmap for the terror group’s disarmament.

Instead, the sum earmarked in the disarmament plan will be used to pay severance to Hamas civil servants who don’t end up being hired by the new Palestinian technocratic government meant to run the territory, an Arab diplomat from one of the mediating countries told The Times of Israel on Wednesday.

“The claims that there is a financial agreement between the Board of Peace and Hamas are false,” Board of Peace Gaza envoy Nickolay Mladenov wrote in Hebrew on X on Wednesday. “No such proposal was discussed, negotiated, or considered, and it will not be on the table in the future either.”

“Hamas will have no role in the governance of Gaza and will have no access to funds,” he continued.

The issue gained attention on Tuesday when Kan reported that Hamas was assured by mediators that $400 million of its debt would be covered by the Board of Peace if it agreed to the disarmament plan.


IDF says Hamas operative killed in first Gaza airstrike in over a week
The Israeli military said it struck and killed a Hamas commander in the northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday, the first Israeli airstrike in the territory in more than a week, breaking a lull that had taken hold as the US-backed Board of Peace presses its plan for the disarmament of the war-torn enclave and the withdrawal of Israeli troops.

The Hamas-affiliated civil defense agency said that one person was killed, while several who were injured in the strike in the Beit Lahiya area were taken to a Gaza City hospital.

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces confirmed carrying out the strike, saying it targeted a Hamas commander who was planning an attack on troops.

The operative was planning attacks on forces in northern Gaza, and he was targeted in an airstrike “to remove the threat to the forces,” the IDF said, publishing footage of the strike. It did not identify the target of the strike by name.

The incident took place a day after the military said it targeted a terror operative who posed an “immediate threat” to troops.

The IDF said that the Hamas sniper was spotted by troops of the 99th Division near the so-called “Yellow Line” that divides the Strip between Israeli and Hamas control.

“Immediately after the identification, the troops fired toward [the operative] to remove the threat,” the IDF said, adding that a “hit was identified.”


Child Soldiers Announced By Gazan Terrorists Are Getting Younger As Media Continues to Turn a Blind Eye
The deceased child soldiers being announced by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) are getting younger, as the media has maintained silence about the phenomenon. Organizations such as United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) have recently decried deaths of children in Gaza. But amid the silence about the possible contributing factor to that tragedy, a second Palestinian terrorist organization has confirmed its use of child soldiers.

Three 15-year-old child soldiers were announced dead in August by PIJ, joining at least 20 deceased child soldiers confirmed by Palestinian terrorist organizations since July. The 15-year-olds were the youngest terrorists confirmed thus far by their organizations to have participated in the October 7 War.

Malik Ahmed Al-Afandi was 15 years old and part of PIJ’s Al-Quds Brigade. He was in the Al-Radwan Battalion of the Gaza Brigade. 15-year-old Mahmoud Moussa Nassir was in the Northern Brigade’s Rocket Unit. 15-year-old Qusay Kamel Washah was in the Northern Brigade’s Central Mobilization unit. Washah’s “mujahid” and “martyr” statuses were announced by PIJ on August 9, while the former two were announced on August 11.

Child Soldier Problem Continues to Unfold
PIJ had begun to release the names of slain child soldiers in July, as previously reported by HonestReporting, and continued to publish martyr notices of older boys since.

On August 9, the terrorist organization claimed 16-year-old Jumaa Khalil Ghubn as a member of the Al-Quds Brigade’s Northern Brigade Central Mobilization Unit. On July 23, 16-year-old Abdul Hadi Abdullah Al-Najjar was announced as a deceased member of the Khan Yunis Brigade’s Al-Balad Battalion. Seventeen-year-old Ashraf Abdul Karim Khattab was announced dead on August 6.

In addition to another nine child soldiers detailed by HonestReporting at the end of July, another 11 have since been confirmed by matching their faces, names, and other identifying details in martyr notices, social media posts, and casualty databases. There are others who are suspected child soldiers, but there was not enough supporting evidence to confirm their identities.


Reporters Without Borders Latest to Be Caught Stealth Editing Terrorists Out of Slain Gaza Journalist List
Reporters Without Borders, or Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF), has been caught stealthily removing at least two Gazan terrorists from its database and list of Palestinian media workers slain in the October 7 War, after they had previously been identified as journalists by the Paris-based media rights non-profit.

The Removal of Mohammad Jarghoun
On July 20, HonestReporting recorded the 68 names of slain Gazan journalists on the RSF media abuses Barometer, a figure confirmed by archival pages of the database. By August 4, the Barometer listed 67 names. The missing name that had previously been recorded was Hamas terrorist Mohammad Jarghoun, who on July 1 had been announced by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades as part of its Rafah Brigade’s Martyr Muhammad Abu Harb Battalion.

Jarghoun was also removed by June 11 from a running article with brief profiles of journalists “killed in connection with their work,” during the October 7 War. On June 10, Jarghoun was still included on the webpage and still appears in the French- language version. He is also still mentioned in a November 2023 update.

“This 23-year-old reporter working for the Smart Media production company was killed by Israeli fire while covering fighting near the Rafah crossing point in the south of the Gaza Strip on 7 October [2023],” read an earlier edit of the ongoing article.

The Removal of Mohamed Nasr Abu Huwaidi
Another name that had been removed from the article after June 10 was Mohamed Nasr Abu Huwaidi, who according to RSF “was clearly identifiable by his press vest when he was killed by an Israeli bombardment on 23 December in the Chajaya district, in eastern Gaza City, where he had gone to film the aftermath of an Israeli strike.”

Huwaidi wasn’t just a journalist for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) affiliated Al-Istiklal, but according to the terrorist organization’s Al-Quds Brigades, was also a commander in its Central Military Media Unit. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) found that he had participated in combat and removed him from their own database of journalists killed in the October 7 War. PIJ’s announcement of Huwaidi’s affiliation was made on March 19.

Despite being a terrorist, Huwaidi was one of the subjects of a September 2024 complaint filed by RSF to the International Criminal Court (ICC), alleging that the State of Israel was responsible for the murder of journalists. Another PIJ terrorist, Muhammad Mahmoud Abu Sharia, was another subject of the complaint. A December 2023 complaint included Asem Al-Barsh, whose family members described him as a “mujahid,” and had Hamas fighters within his family. A May 2024 complaint included Ahmed Badir, who was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Despite these issues, RSF has not withdrawn or revised its ICC filings.

RSF Methodological Issues
In addition to the removal of Jarghoun and Huwaidi from the article, an amendment about RSF’s methodology appeared at the bottom after June 10, noting that the organization “updates this registry on an ongoing basis as new information becomes available concerning journalists killed since October 7, 2023.”

“The organization applies a rigorous methodology of data collection and fact-checking despite severe operational constraints, including the continued lack of independent access to the Gaza Strip and parts of southern Lebanon,” RSF continued.

RSF notes in the article and its Barometer that “journalists are listed only if RSF has established that their death or imprisonment was linked to their journalistic activity. The list does not include journalists who were killed or imprisoned for reasons unrelated to their work or when the link to their work has not yet been confirmed.”

This caused strife with the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, which in December 2023 accused RSF of “whitewashing the image of the occupation” by only including journalists killed in the line of duty.

However, RSF also created an appearance of certainty about the nature of Jarghoun and Huwaidi’s deaths, with materials claiming that the reason for their demise was “established” as being connected to their work.

According to a preliminary audit by HonestReporting, of the 67 remaining journalists in RSF’s database, at least 26.86% have terrorist ties. Three have had martyr notices issued by terrorist organizations, three have been linked to participation in hostilities through obituaries and other open-source information, four were employed by terrorist-affiliated outlets, and eight were alleged by the IDF to be terrorists. A nineteenth was affiliated with a news outlet of disputed terrorist affiliation.


Italian union targets journalists over Israel coverage
A Progressive workers’ union within Italy’s state broadcaster, RAI, recently signed a petition denouncing three RAI journalists as “propagandists of occupation” by Israel, in a move that Jewish community representatives this week said was reminiscent of Fascist practices.

The union, USB–RAI, joined a petition by Palestine Action Italia, which targets RAI Press Office director Incoronata Boccia, Jerusalem correspondent Giovan Battista Brunori and host Antonino Monteleone.

“Enough with propaganda paid for by our taxes! We have the right to public information that does not convey occupation propaganda,” read the petition, which more than 2,000 people have signed.

The president of the Jewish Community of Milan, Walker Meghnagi, condemned the petition and called it “a veritable blacklist that evokes dark periods in our country’s history.”

The petition, and USB-RAI’s support of it, also prompted condemnations from senior politicians.

Senator Maurizio Gasparri, a former journalist and member of the RAI Oversight Commission, said it was “absurd and unacceptable,” the news site Giornalisti Italia reported earlier this week. He expressed solidarity with the targeted journalists “who carry out their work with sacrifice, professionalism, and dedication.”

Maurizio Lupi, a senior lawmaker in the lower house of Italy’s parliament, condemned the petition. “The personal targeting of journalists or the launch of campaigns against them is not acceptable,” Giornalisti Italia quoted him as saying.

The action by USB-RAI, a relatively new and small union that called for RAI to boycott the Eurovision Song Festival this year over Israel’s participation, is linked an earlier controversy concerning RAI’s reporting about Israel.

Last month, anti-Israel activists posted a caricature that was widely considered to be antisemitic on an online platform operated by Radio 1, the primary state-owned public radio channel operated by RAI. It depicted an ominously grinning canine or other predatory mammal with sharp teeth, sidelocks and a kippah. It was titled: “The excurZionist.”





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